Buy a name for thirty thousand, sell a name for thirty cents.

(Baonghean.vn) - Vinalines is carrying out procedures to liquidate the 83M Floating Dock with the previous "purchase" price of 462 billion and the expected starting selling price of 34.85 billion. With the simplest subtraction, even an elementary school student can calculate that at least 427.15 billion VND of the people's money has been lost! However, the matter does not stop there because experts in the industry, who understand the market, believe that 34.85 billion is the price for Vinalines to... dream about!.

Floating Dock 83M

The reason for this is that no one would be foolish enough to spend a lot of money to bring back such a useless debt when its "sacred mission", the true value of that iron object that is more than 50 years old is only encapsulated in two words "scrap iron". Even Mr. Le Hoang Hieu - Director of Cac Thinh Xanh Company Limited, who specializes in purchasing scrap in large quantities, after calculating, "challenged Vinalines to sell it for over 1 billion VND"! Its book value has now reached 500 billion VND, but "traders" only value it at 1 billion, because "solid steel like this is only 2000 VND/1 kg". How pitiful!

The story about the 83M Floating Dock from a few years ago suddenly became hot again. As we know, the 83M Floating Dock was "born" by MHI, or Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. In 1965, MHI built a 25,000-ton floating dock for the Soviet Union in Yokohama. The report cited MHI's original records stating that 83M was the manufacturing number of the floating dock. The internal dimensions of the dock are: 171 meters long x 30 meters, enough to receive ships 180 meters long, 28 meters wide with a draft of 7 meters. Like a squeezed lemon, after 40 years of operation, the 83M Floating Dock was damaged a lot and was officially decommissioned by the Russian Register in 2006. When it was dead, when people threw it away, we sent a group of experts to study it like a horseback riding to see the flowers and presented a plan to go back! Even from August 2 to 5, 2007, the survey team with key members did not bother to work with representatives of the Nakhodka Factory but only contacted and transacted with the Director of the brokerage company!

The investigation agency determined that from the beginning of 2007 to the end of 2008, through the purchase of the 83M floating dock with AP Company - Singapore, Duong Chi Dung and his accomplices did not comply with State regulations, violated the provisions of the law on investment, bidding, conditions for importing ships, customs procedures for commercial export and import goods... The defendants' actions caused a loss of VND 366,930,032,432 to the State budget.

The law violation has been investigated and concluded, the guilty person has been brought to court, but the economic consequences are still obvious. Spending a huge amount of money to bring home a pile of cassava scraps, spending hundreds of millions of dong every month to guard it while it is further degraded and polluting the environment.

Recently, speaking to the press, Mr. Tran Tuan Hai - Head of Development Strategy and Communications Department, Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines) - said that regarding the liquidation of the 83M floating dock, the Corporation has reported and received approval from the Ministry of Transport. Regarding the liquidation procedure, Vinalines will sell in the form of a public asset auction and sell in its original condition. Currently, Vinalines is carrying out the asset liquidation procedures according to the provisions of law and has completed the hiring of a price appraisal. Vinalines has set the starting price at 34.85 billion VND and will auction based on this floor price. In response to information that this floating dock is currently only worth about 1 billion VND and the cost of dismantling may be higher than the selling price, a representative of Vinalines confirmed that they are negotiating to hire an auction consultant and are expected to conduct the auction in mid-May 2016.

Obviously, this piece of scrap metal called a floating dock is forced to "go" in the near future. For nearly 10 years, it seems to have become a symbol of waste in the use of capital by some state-owned corporations. We have lost too much from it, lost money, lost officials, lost the trust of the people and lost prestige in international trade. Perhaps the only thing we get from this incident is lessons about lax management. The saying of our ancestors, "Buy a reputation for thirty thousand, sell it for three coins" is probably true in the case of the "big guy" Vinalines.

Nguyen Khac An